2012 NFL Seasons Begins in Just a Few Days

The 2012 NFL season begins in just over a week and I am ready! I already have the man cave all set up, starting with the requisite 50″ Sony TV, surround sound system, reclining leather chairs, a pantry full of various snacks, cold refreshments in the fridge, and the local pizza place’s phone number on speed dial.

Besides the fact that I am actually ready this year for the season to begin, another reason for my excitement is that I was able to attend the training camp of the Dallas Cowboys a few weeks ago in what we call the “Gold Coast” area of California.  As I watched Tony Romo, Morris Claiborne, DeMarcus Ware and the others practice, it inspired me to work even harder to get the new and improved SpeedTrainingOnline.com site up and running. It was inspiring to see several of the members of the team working specifically on what we teach athletes…speed training.

I can’t wait for the 2012 NFL season and this new chapter for SpeedTrainingOnline.com to begin.

RJ Clement, MBA
General Manager
SpeedTrainingOnline.com

Personal goal setting with a twist

Today my erratic theme relates to personal goal setting. I was thinking about goal setting and how important it is to write down my goals. This not only helps in simply remembering the goals, but also there seems to be some magic to committing goals to paper. This is written quite regularly in self-help books and articles on personal growth and success.

In thinking about today’s theme, I began pondering other areas where I write down things so that I am sure not to forget them. This led me to the preparation of grocery shopping lists. The twist came when I considered the relative importance of certain items on the shopping list. I thought, “what items, if I were I to leave the store without them, would most certainly prompt a return visit to the store to purchase them?” Would it be the milk? the bread? the bathroom tissue? The items that would prompt a return visit are, from my perspective, the most critical ones on that list.

If we make a list of goals for the day or the week, just like our shopping list, which goals must be accomplished today? Especially if, like my lists of goals, there are more items every day than time to accomplish them all. What goals, if we look back at our list at the end of the day, or the end of the month, or the end of the year, were the most important to accomplish? Did we accomplish the most important things on our list? Or did we spend too much time on the less important items?

By considering the relative importance of each goal or task that we strive to accomplish, we have a better chance of achieving what is really important to us in whatever we do.

RJ Clement
Entrepreneur

What Is Apple Going To Do With Its $97.6B In Cash?

In a previous post, I mentioned that one of the factors that I believe to be holding back the U.S. economy is that corporations are holding on to piles of cash, rather than infusing the money into the economy. This week I learned that Apple Computer has $97.6 billion dollars in the bank. $97.6 billion, really? That certainly begs the question: what is Apple going to to with all that cash?

I have a couple of ideas. How about paying a dividend on the stock, currently trading at nearly $450 per share? Here is another thought: how about hiring some American workers? I wonder how many new jobs Apple could create with even 1/10th of that amount, or $9.76 billion? Perhaps even 1/100th?

There is “good news” from Apple regarding their cash, however. As Paul R. La Monica reported in CNN’s Tech Buzz earlier in the week (http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/25/technology/thebuzz/), “Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that the company ‘was not letting [the cash] burn a hole in our pockets.'” I have not yet seen any details as to how they plan to spend it, but one of the concerns that Apple seems to have is that a good portion of that money (reportedly $64 billion) is held offshore and if it were infused into the U.S. economy, the company would have to pay taxes on it.

Let me get this straight…this California-based, U.S. company has a mountain of cash which it is not spending, and is being held specifically in a location where most of it is not subject to U.S. taxes? In other words, under their current plans, they are not creating jobs, not stimulating the economy, and are positioned to not pay U.S. taxes for a large share of their profits. Is there any question that Apple’s fiscal policies are helping to keep the U.S. economy in it’s current state? How many other examples of this kind of fiscal policy can be found within U.S. companies?

Just Take Action

Today’s theme is “Just take action.” There are entire books written on the importance of taking action relative to whatever you want to accomplish. This can apply to any project, whether you are writing the next great global best-selling novel, writing a song, starting a business, or even just getting started on a project around the house upon which you have been procrastinating.

Tony Robbins, famous American self-help author, motivational speaker, and advisor to leaders from around the world says, “the path to success is to take massive, determined action.”

Much of what I do on a daily basis these days is relatively new to me; running, blogging, business consulting, and it can be very easy to be paralyzed by inaction, so I simply try to tell myself each day that I need to take action today. The more the better.

Eckhart Tolle, New York Times Bestselling Author, says, “Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”

The Perfect Storm of the U.S. Economy

Veteran and well-known economic forecaster Nouriel Roubini said in July of 2011 that the United States economy is headed for a “perfect storm” in 2013. I think we are already in a “perfect storm” in the United States economy, though the optimist within me wants to believe that we are at the tail end of the storm. When people use the phrase “Perfect Storm,” it seems as though they sometimes forget the “storm” part of that phrase, and the fact that in the movie of the same name, nearly everyone died. But it has definitely been a storm. The factors that combine to create the “perfect storm” in the U.S. economy are: the lagging economy, consumer confidence, disagreement over how large government should be and how to solve this disagreement, high unemployment and the tendency by government and business to contribute to it.

The U.S. economy continues to lag, with consumer confidence still shaky, but perhaps making a comeback. See chart below. In order to stimulate the economy, people and companies need to be spending money. This generally happens when confidence is high.

Americans desire services that typically only governments provide, such as schools, roads, clean water, social security, health care for seniors and national defense, but they don’t want to pay for them. Any discussion about an increase in tax revenue or rate increases by a politician or government organization is instantly dismissed by large numbers of the voting public whenever possible. This has happened on many occasions in cities, counties and states across the country. When there are discussions about reducing government, this is met with a similar enthusiastic opposition.

Whether one philosophically agrees with the size of the government as it stands right now or not, it is what it is. We have gotten where we are and it takes time and leadership to make a change one way or another. However, doing nothing at this time will not fix the situation. Governments either need more money to pay for the services that the public expects, or they need to make hard decisions to cut services to the point where the budget can cover what remains.

It strikes me that there is an opportunity here to educate the public on what is costs to provide the services that they want. How many years in a row do we have to cut school budgets in California, for instance, before people have finally had enough? Is this how we really want the trend in education to continue? Does anyone really think that by continuing to cut education budgets, somehow their children will receive a better education, and not a worse one?

The final component in the structure of my “perfect storm” is that it seems that at a time when unemployment is very high in this country, government agencies and businesses focus their cost-reduction efforts on reducing labor, leading to the vicious cycle we see in the unemployment figures. Technology and the availability of cheap labor in other countries around the world allow corporations to replace American workers. At this point, I should also remind the readers that corporate savings accounts are at all-time highs. Corporations, including banks of all size, are saving money, and not hiring people or making loans to small businesses, even when there is sufficient equity or profit potential in the deal.

It is my sincere hope that we are at the tail end of one aspect of the “perfect storm,” that being the economy and consumer confidence. The other factors that remain, and will make it difficult to steer out of this storm, must be addressed using real leadership, compromise, intelligence, and in the interest of the well-being of the people of this country. The country cannot come out of this storm quickly if the focus is on individual gain or shareholder profits at the expense of the people.